REPORT: OCTOBER 2019 Orders from Above: Massive Human Rights Abuses Under Trump Administration Return to Mexico Policy In September 2019, the Trump Administration’s policy of returning asylum seekers to Mexico, which it farcically refers to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), entered a new phase. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expanded this flawed program, sending men, women and children from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries to wait in the notoriously dangerous Mexican border state of Tamaulipas and opened secretive tent courts in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, for MPP hearings. This policy delivers children, their families, and other asylum seekers to areas so plagued by violence that the U.S. State Department has designated the state of Tamaulipas a Level 4 threat risk—the same warning as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, North Korea, and Yemen. Yet the administration cynically touts this dangerous and illegal policy as an “effective” alternative to family separation and family detention that brings “integrity” to the immigration system – asserting that it keeps “families together and not in custody.” But the reality is that the Trump Administration has refused to implement humane, effective, and fiscally prudent strategies to manage refugee arrivals in ways that uphold U.S. law and treaty commitments. MPP works in tandem with other illegal administration policies (including turn-backs, the third-country transit asylum ban, which went into full effect in September, and, once implemented, asylum-seeker transfer agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) to ban, block, and terrify refugees from seeking protection in the United States. The forced return policy violates legal prohibitions in U.S. law and international obligations on returning people seeking U.S. protection to persecution and torture, and blatantly flouts the asylum laws and due process protections Congress adopted for refugees seeking protection at the border. Since the start of MPP in January, DHS has forced nearly 50,000 asylum seekers and migrants to wait in danger in Mexico. In addition, some 26,000 are stranded in Mexico due to metering—the illegal policy of turning back asylum applicants at ports of entry. This report is based on interviews with asylum seekers stranded in Mexico, attorneys, humanitarian volunteers, and Mexican government officials; continuing field research, including in Matamoros, Mexico; observation of MPP immigration court hearings; and reports from human rights organizations, legal monitors, and the media. Human Rights First observed immigration court proceedings at the Brownsville tent court remotely from the Harlingen immigration court because U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) denied Human Rights First’s request for access to the facility. This report is an update to our March 2019 and August 2019 reports. Human Rights First found: The Trump Administration is delivering men, women and children seeking refuge from Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries to some of the most dangerous areas of Mexico. DHS continues these dangerous forced returns despite widely reported media, academic, and NGO reports that organized criminal groups and corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials, among others, target asylum seekers for kidnapping, torture, rape, and other violent attacks. For example, after DHS returned them to Nuevo Laredo, a Guatemalan family with two young children, five Cuban asylum seekers, and four Venezuelan women and a girl were among those kidnapped and held captive in multiple separate incidents. Two other young women were kidnapped as they slept on the street after DHS returned a group of asylum seekers to Nuevo Laredo Human Rights First ORDERS FROM ABOVE following a Laredo tent court hearing. Instead of briefly passing through these dangerous regions to reach the U.S. border to request refugee protection, tens of thousands of asylum seekers are now stranded in peril for months. There are already over 340 public reports of rape, kidnapping, torture, and other violent attacks against asylum seekers returned to Mexico under MPP – a sharp increase from August when Human Rights First identified 110 publicly reported attacks against returned individuals. But these kidnappings and assaults are still likely vastly underreported as the overwhelming majority of returned individuals have not spoken with journalists or human rights investigators. These human rights abuses are the predictable result of the Trump Administration and DHS decision to send families and other asylum seekers to wait in dangerous areas, where they are targeted because of their race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and status as migrants. The MPP fear screening process is a farce that returns asylum seekers to grave danger. CBP continues to fail to refer asylum seekers for these deeply flawed fear-screening interviews, which appear to be increasingly cursory and perfunctory. DHS has returned individuals to Mexico under MPP who were previously targeted there, including a transgender woman from El Salvador, who had been kidnapped and raped, and a Nicaraguan political activist, who was kidnapped for ransom and who witnessed his abductors torturing another man captive who had tried to escape. A woman kidnapped in Mexico with her three children was told by a CBP officer, “we have orders from above to return all;” a CBP officer told a man kidnapped with his son in Mexico that if he insisted on claiming a fear of return there, he would be separated from his son. In violation of its own policy, DHS returns Mexican nationals and vulnerable individuals, including those with serious medical issues, pregnant women, and LGBTQ persons. Refugees and migrants are stranded in Mexico in often inhumane and horrific conditions. More than one thousand children, families, and adults are sleeping on the streets in front of the Matamoros port of entry without adequate access to water or proper sanitation, too afraid to enter the city because of the extreme violence there. An American nurse, visiting as a volunteer, told Human Rights First researchers that many of the children were suffering from diarrhea and dehydration. MPP is a due process charade that effectively makes it impossible for the vast majority to be represented by counsel in their immigration court removal proceedings. Nearly 99 percent of all returned asylum seekers were unrepresented through August, according to the latest available data from the immigration courts. Not only does MPP endanger the safety of refugees, but it also threatens the safety of American lawyers and volunteers whom DHS is essentially pushing to cross into areas of Mexico plagued by kidnappings and deadly violence to attempt to provide some assistance. Despite widely reported attacks on returned asylum seekers under MPP, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan stated in September that he didn't believe accounts of kidnappings, dismissing them as “anecdotal allegations.” Morgan cited a lack of information from the Mexican government “corroborating or verifying these allegations” but failed to acknowledge that attacks against migrants often go unreported to Mexican law enforcement, in part because some Mexican police officers and security forces have been implicated in kidnappings, rape, and other human rights abuses against migrants. In late August, Human Rights First filed a complaint with the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties with information on the rape, kidnapping, and assault of dozens of returned asylum seekers in Mexico. 2 ORDERS FROM ABOVE Human Rights First urges the Trump Administration to: Cease MPP and all other policies and practices that violate U.S. asylum and immigration law and U.S. Refugee Protocol obligations, including the third-country transit asylum ban, turn-backs and orchestrated reductions on asylum processing at ports of entry, and all attempts to send asylum seekers to countries, including El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, that do not meet the legal requirements for safe-third country agreements under U.S. law. Instead, the United States should employ effective and humane strategies that uphold U.S. laws and treaties. Direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to restore timely and orderly asylum processing at ports of entry and ensure humane conditions for those held temporarily under CBP custody, meeting all legal standards, including the Flores Settlement Agreement and DHS internal detention policies. Human Rights First recommends that Congress: Withhold appropriations to DHS and the Department of Justice used to carry out MPP; hold MPP oversight hearings (including the legally dubious transfer of funds for disaster preparation to fund the construction of MPP tent courts); and conduct official visits to Mexican border towns, CBP facilities and Border Patrol stations on the southern border, and immigration courts including tent facilities to monitor the massive human rights violations caused by MPP. Hundreds of Publicly Reported Cases of Rape, Kidnapping, and Assault Instead of allowing asylum seekers to remain safely in the United States while their asylum claims are decided, as required by the U.S. Refugee Act and subsequent immigration law, the Trump Administration – through MPP – delivers asylum seekers and migrants to rape, kidnapping, torture, and other violent assaults in Mexico. Some 3 ORDERS FROM ABOVE returned asylum